The Mask
by itsthelighting
Summary: Forbidden Forest magical haven. Implied DG


**The Mask**

* * *

Draco shifted against the wall. Sinking down against it's four foot height, the small plants that grew out of the stones tickling his neck where his hood had settled back. '_A long run_' he thought. '_I'll stay forever_', pressing himself into the sturdiness of gray and green. An hour of speed in all directions, directed by the sounds he was hearing. Escaping the massacre behind himself. Like giving chase to an imaginary savior he followed what he fancied a nymph of his own creation. Red fire spouting from his petite heroine's head, like flames burning her thoughts into a mane. Her small frame dashing across the grounds arms swinging back and forth her limbs creating the thicket that now surrounded him. Insanity taking him deep into an embrace of safety, ironic the forbidden forest hell turned haven. Deep into nightmare of branches and magic, as morning light and mist took the world once more, he sat. Images by hundreds flooded the back of his eyelids all in a rushed exquisite detail.

A classroom of Slytherins and Ravenclaws- a quill from a student two seats in front of him fluttering down to the stone floor, a short gray and blue scarf snaked around the bottom of a brittle looking, uncomfortable but mostly uniform chair. A thin, short, soft brown splinter in his third finger as he reached to pull a book from it's shelf. Harsh light escaping the curtains of the bed next to him, a slithering effect falling down the weave of the curtain material. At the bottom of a deep high back chair the arms swirling in half circles forming elegant lines; causing the sitter to look taller and authoritative. Vincent's foot tapping in rhythm with a strange hard beat he didn't recognize. Greg lips moving in a lulling way singing a song so hypnotic he could almost hear it. Inky black hair bleeding down the sides of the seeker's face hovering in front of the stands, inquisitive green eyes willing themselves to glimpse something that was surely never in existence more then a moment. The edge of the white window sill, the damp pane with his breath, he watched his parents dancing in slow waltz alone in the garden. The photograph's soft much-touched sides, from where he fingered it in his pocket. He slid it into his dresser, third drawer down, her face looking at him with question as he slowly moved a deep green sweater against it. The despairing black expanse of thestral wings before him while he climbed into the Hogwart's carriage. His aunt's feral eyes, lidded with intense interest as her lips whispered '_Crucio'_ into the ear of someone he vaguely knew to be on the jury at her trial 18 years before. Her wand tip running up and down the small hill and valley in the man's neck while he shook shortly afterwards. Potion instructions on a folded hankie, improvising as he grabbed unnamed ingredients from an over-whelming, red-stained store cabinet. Under the fifth unlabeled jar he picked up there was an empty envelope. It was marked with in the way something might be if you held it too long, wrinkling and with small marks from whatever may have been on your hands.

"I'm alive." He murmured against the unnatural porcelain covering his visage. Reaching behind his head and pushing his fingers through matted hair he pick at the knot of the silk ribbon holding another identity to his face. Staring at the mask in his hand thoughts much like '_I might have been a doll if not for the unbelievable horror this face invokes_.' A small smile playing at it's lips, a part so narrow between them that memories of speaking against it's interior was so close to the gentlest of kissing he might not ever know the difference. He held his fingers against the inside of the bridge of the nose wrapping his fingers around it and letting his thumb move in circles from the temple across the long soft cheek bones into the roundness of the cheeks and back. Caressing the craftsmanship so fine it was almost tragic, he felt the hollow emptiness of the eyes like a cold fever between his shoulder blades moving up his neck and chilling his face with a shame he couldn't personalize.

A survivor's insanity taking over what was left of his mind, painfully aware of everything. The conscious of this place infecting him, as if the whole forest were in ear shot. The long rocks of the wall behind him nuzzling his back uncomfortably. Slipping into a soft spot, he imagines _this_ must be what drowning is like.

* * *

A/N:  
This was the beginning of short one-shot of Draco/Ginny. However the rest of the writing just didn't fit this style. So I rewrote the first bit of that and left this on it's own. 


End file.
